November 2010

November 19, 2010

Chuck Maniscalco's resignation as CEO of Seventh Generation in September, followed by Jeffrey Hollender's departure from Seventh Generation in October pushed me to think about leadership in a company committed to sustainable business practice and what that implies.

In the mix of my thinking, I recalled reading that Seventh Generation has $30M in investment lined up to expand and grow the company. So I began to wonder what does this imply or mean to all the stakeholders and its implication to leadership responsibility.

Seventh Generation is currently a privately held company, after a period of being a public company from 1993-2000. During its public status, its stock was never worth more than $5.00 per share. I cannot find any information on status of that $30M and its implication to the investment strategy or company incorporation.

In 2000, Jeffrey Hollender and others perceived that they had lost control of the company; and Hollender and 11 other investors bought back the shares for a premium to investors and took control of the company. At that time of transaction the stock was valued at $.87 and private investors bought out public shareholders for $1.30.

I believe that the way Seventh Generation - the board, stakeholders and current leadership prepare to measure Seventh Generation as an investment public or private for the future will be the critical to how a CEO is hired to replace Hollender and Maniscalco? The kind of CEO needed to answer to investors for a public traded company is very different than than a CEO preparing the company for IPO or a CEO hired by all stakeholders to lead solely focused on sustaining the company and guiding the adaption of the company strategy for the marketplace and regard to competition e.g. Clorox, Procter and Gamble or S E Johnson and Company?

Yet a $30M investment can also be an opportunity for a company to think of itself as an economy, create jobs and integrate a complete sustainability framework of continuous learning with regard for all stakeholder needs, where the needs of investors do not take priority over the needs of other stakeholders.

How do people think about "leadership?"

Leadership has become a buzz word like CSR and Sustainability.....yet in todays' world we are always looking for a leader to idolize or blame. We are quick to talk about leadership failure and the media has a constant our pouring of philosophical views on what it means to be a leader or what a leader did or did not do.

What we do not often talk about is what is a leader leading and for what reason in a context that goes beyond the idea that a leader heads something or sits over a group of people or is responsible for delivering on a promise.

Over the past decade leaders have come under microscopic view re: their behavior, value and ethics.

Rarely have I seen any leader judged or reviewed for his impact on an economy. Tyler Elm, past Senior Director, Corpoate Strategy and Finance, Wal Mart Stores, Inc. wrote in his foreward to Chris Laszlo's, Sustainable Value

I recall a colleague presenting me with the following statistic a few years ago: "Of the world's 100 largest economies, 42 are now corporations, not countries."....walmart Stores, ranked first on the Fortune 500 and approaching $350B in annual sales by 2007.

For 2010, the top 10 Fortune 500 companies again ranking Walmart as first followed by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, General Electric, Bank of America, ConocoPhillips, AT&T, Ford Motor, JP Morgan Chase and HP.

All these companies have the great impact on jobs and the economies local to their operations. These companies impact the health, well being, economic stability of the people they employ and all other stakeholders. Collusion, ignorance or an informed decision by any corporations of this size can impact millions of people that may have no direct involvement with a company in the way the BP Oil Spill impacted the Gulf Region of the US.

Yet in most instances corporations, their stakeholders and others do not think of a corporate system as a living economy. Living economies are geographical regions of dense populations of people who reside by each, who can experience direct and indirect harm due to economic decisions made by political, business or community leaders.

Residents within these economies can experience harm due to how economic decision makers carry out their jobs for people they perceive as their most immediate stakeholders without factoring in how a decision can create harm to health, the environment and a region, e.g. the BP Oil Spill. These decision makers make decisions from the view of benefit for their most immediate value chain of people, e.g. shareholders, investors, or customers.

What happens when leaders think of a company as an economy?

Two companies on the list of the top 10 Fortune 500 began a few years back at the leadership level began to think about the implications of company strategy and what that meants if the company stakeholders viewed a corporate strategy as a "economy." These two companies are Walmart and General Electric.

The Wikipedia about Walmart offers a thorough summary of how Walmart changed after embedding sustainability into the company culture. Walmart's CEO Lee Scott passed the baton to Michael Duke, after Duke was elected at the 2009 annual shareholders meeting. Scott has been serving as Duke's and will continue to as Chairman thru 2011. With Duke's appointment Walmart has expanded its application of sustainability in the company and throughout the global supply chain.

Walmart's format of success planning and strategy I believe is less relevant to Seventh Generation's needs today. I find the change that General Electric has gone through guided by Jeffrey Immelt much more relevant. GE like Walmart appointed a leader from within the company, unlike Walmart, this leader has been the one to embed sustainability into GE's business strategy and led a company through a culture of change that has included job creation, investment in new ventures and an outreach to its supply chain that is serving as a model for others.

GE has also developed and funded a non profit foundation with an educational focus. The GE Foundation foucs is on funding programs that supports US students to achieve a strong foundation in math and science. Skill in science, technology and math (STEM) are now viewed the most critical skills to learn as early as kindergarten, in order to join the new emerging sustainable workforce. Through GE's management education program, STEM skilled workers are supported to develop the emotional intelligence and holistic overview critical to working in a company that has integrated a sustainbility into its culture.

Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO followed decades of empowering a performance driven culture as led by Jack Welch. Welch was Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. During Jack's reign, the company culture was described as "the Welch Way.". There are many books and stories about how Jack led GE and what his values and leadership implied to others.

While Jack Welch fostered a system of professional development and management education in General Electric that is globally respected, the Welch Way has been replaced by an integrated sustainability strategy that fosters people as corporate citizens who define their work from a perspective of CSR through a new lens of what it means to integrate sustainability into a culture of change. Jeffrey Immelt began fostering GE's culture with this view when he followed Welch became CEO and Chairman of GE in 2002. Jeffrey, like Michael Duke of Walmart had a long career internal to the company where he was promoted to Chair and CEO. Immelt's personal choice was to lead his company to embed sustainability into its culture.

By 2008, Immelt began describing himself as a banker with "deep pockets, who also invested in people. Immelt differentiates himself from an investment firm because he devised and put into practice a sustainability framework that defined how General Electric could lead the world into the building of a sustainable economy describing practices within the company, plans for how to work with the supply chain. Outside of GE, Immelt announced and carried through on plans to invest in new ventures that are not entirely owned by GE. In some cases these small enterprises are competitors to GE divisions and businesses; creating a social network of coopetition as part of the GE Culture.

Immelt outlined this framework, September 2008 to students at University of Berkley, Hass School of Business. I have since listened to this video personally over 10 times as a source of influence for my own thinking on Sustainable Strategy, Leadership and Change. Immelts presentation to me has served to be one of the most practical guides for how I define, coach and think about leadership for any company. I view this as a manifesto of change for the 21st century.

While Immelt and GE's executive team were outperforming the stock which from 2004-2006 traded at about $35.00 a share; Immelt showed his belief in a company that under Welch grew into a performance driven culture. It is now 2010 and GE's stock value is at a low of $16.22 and considered a good stock pick with a outstanding portfolio of new innovative businesses in wind and bioscience and more. For all appearances, it appears that GE has become a culture of innovation and transformed from a culture of performance. Yet doesn't innovation imply performance?

In someways, Immelt and his teams' performance and leadership approach remind me Procter and Gamble as led by both John Pepper and Al Laffley. Laffley will step down in July and be replace by Bob MacDonald. What all these men share in common are their passion for developing people, investing in them, and supporting foundation activity that impacts the healthy and education of future generations.

What have I learned from Jeffrey Immelt, P&G and others I view as Sustainability Leaders?

1. They think! Each person presents when they speak publically provides a thought leadership and frameworkof learning and practice; they do not impose their will on others. These leaders offer their thought leadership as something for personal translation and relevance.

2. They ask questions! These leaders don't come on stage presenting their way of doing business as "the way." These men speak in plain english with out jargon in a form of authenticity that opens the door of possibility for another person to learn from and adapt for their own personal model of guidance.

3. They value others! They invest in people. Immelt made this clear in his presentation at UC Berkeley Hass. I have watched John Pepper as a long time observer of his work at P&G and Disney do this over and over again. Pepper pays attention to people by observation and reflection. without speaking and invited people into conversation without regard for hierachy. I have watched both Immelt and Pepper recognize value in network rather than hierachy.

4. These leaders invest in education and professional development for the people they work with. When these leaders ask for proposals, they view that proposals imply an investment in time, learning and resource allocation. Learning implies embracing failure and they insure that in any company they work in there is a professional development and education system that supports people to apply their learning on the job.

5. These leaders proactively respond to marketplace change. The video provided here shows how Immelt has responded to the demand of change re: energy, environment and health. At P&G, Pepper was the first leader to acknowledge the need to reward brand managers for retiring products out of date and innovating new products; Lafley took on the integenerational and cultural changes of his consumers working with his team to conduct research on the appeal of products and formulas for age and country. Bob MacDonald is now facing a frugal market that is not as brand loyal to Tide, Gillette or Olay and showing price points matter as much as brand.

6. These leaders have a strong value for sustainability. . I believe that Immelt, Pepper, Lafley and MacDonald not only embrace the company mission but line up the company strategy, organization and practices to take on the challenge of the times. GE and P&G have a history and score card of leaders of specific business units that shaped their jobs and response to the challenge their CEO embraced.

7. Each of these leaders is involved in mentoring the next generation by funding and building programs that invest in youth education, health and job creation.

These CEO's also know how to stand by people they work with, who worked hard to learn from failure. They continually let others lead with their own personal autonomy and don't perceive the job of a CEO is about taking credit for what others do. Recent reports from GE re: Ecoimagination and Healthymagination offer these stories. There are many stories in the business literature about P&G and some of their leaders who had the gumption to act on intuition and gut and create exceptional results.

Jeffrey was Seventh Generation's spokesperson. There is no replacement for Jeffrey's voice.I don't know Peter, I don't know if he is a leader or simply an investor who has inherited a lead position with a community now seeking leadership. At the, I wonder if Seventh Generation in its transition will rely on "a leadership voice" or inspire many voices offering different perspectives for a variety of topics e.g. stock value,chemicals and more.

What can Seventh Generation learn from Procter and Gamble and General Electric where it contributes to images of a generation of healthy workers, who work wisely to live well and contributes to what WorkEcology's Contributing Editor, Dave Wann would call the New Normal.

For now, I am looking to Seventh Generation to learn how the board responds to filling its leadership gap; and how the board begins repair of a failed succession plan. To me the real preparation re: succession is not in finding "a replacement leader;" it is how the people who worked for the most recent leader are prepared to respond to change and do their jobs with or without the appointment of a new leader.

I asked myself, "What I would do if I was Peter Graham or actually working at Seventh Generation?" My approach would be similar to the answer to the question John Pepper asked me years ago. When John Pepper asked me what I wanted to do at P&G at a time P&G was preparing for change, my answer was this:

1. I would meet with every employee in any business unit I was assigned where I could have impact to find out how they want to give their best performance;

2. I would synthesize this into a report into a learning report and present the report to everyone influenced by these employees (all stakeholders) or seved by these employees and convene a meeting to launch a learning community with representation from the investors.

In addition, I would place this list of intention on a wall above my desk with guidelines for my own behavior:

1. Make no assumptions about what I want to do.

2. Find out what others want to do and where they have not been heard and provide people a framework to request what they needed to give their best performance?

3. Compare all the requests and see where there are replications and ask people who replicated each other to meet in small groups and unite in a new proposal framework?

4. Map out a base of operation that cannot change that keeps the company stable with the leaders of all operational aspects of the company.

5. Select a person on the transition team as acting CEO, with the understanding that the CEO job description will be written at the end of one year and there will be a recruitment process created at that time to select a CEO based on insuring a CEO who is respected by investors and representation from all stakeholder groups.

6. Ask everyone to map out how they Seventh Generation can define itself as an economy, similar to GE and Walmart or if it can? Guide a cultural shift in view beyond how people's jobs are defined; and imagine how Seventh Generation can create an exemplary performance in the contet of the Earth Charter's Precautionary Prinicple.

7. Run an election for all stakeholder participation to recommend people to participate in a transition leadership team. Bring to this team a specific list of legitimate competencies and skill requirements that are needed now for the company to perform in a stable form?

8. Survey all stakeholders to submit a list of values, ethics and principles that matter to the all stakeholders in how Seventh Generation operates in the world?

9. Finally, create a review and final summary for the transition team to review and approve. Begin to see who within the transition team is demonstrating leadership and taking responsibility and let them author formal job descriptions reflecting this and prepare their own metrics for performance review.

At the end of 1 year have a meeting with the investors to review performance and get their feedback. Take the investor feedback and begin a new stage of work

Then for begin a new stage of work as follows:

1. Select a group of people who do not ordinarily work together to begin to identify views, perspectives that have not previously been discussed in the company that others would like to learn more about.

2. Begin to build out a method for a community to form a continuous learning group that identifies activities of learning important for the future of the company for which the company does not have resources or people in place to evaluate the implications of what is identified as a learning ladder for the company to sustain and operate with stability.

3. Based on these intentions and principles of behavior and practice, begin bi-weekly meetings of everyone on the transition team to continually review and audit the process and improve on the process based on the outcomes harvested and the observations of the transition team and well defined methods of review with representation of all stakeholders.

Why value this approach?

In my experience many companies formed out of an entreprenuerial vision become about the founding heroes or an idea of how to protect the original intent and product line of a company. I believe one of the most challanging transitions to any company today, is to create an activity drawning on input and participation from all stakeholders to examine how a company brings life to the economy it contributes to or creates.

Anyone who takes a look at the story of Walmart, GE and Disney through 2000, will see that that company story is about what the leaders want and do. Today Walmart, GE and Disney that have taken their portfolio of assets, knowledge and talent and shaped those assets into something of value in many different forms for millions of people.

My belief is that this is the most critical leadership framework any company can create for itself and through observation I can now see that if the CEO's or Chair's of each of these companies mention were unable to perform their job, there are many other people who can continue with inspiring and acting on what really matters and is reflected in the purpose each of these companies has integrated into their strategies, decisions, products and services that delivers on a brand of with a reputation for influencing society today to work toward sustainable change and inject life into our global economy for people, planet and environment.

My own work now is to test this manifesto within communities of people I engage with out of my own passion to empower companies to create a societal scale means of healthy living for people of all generations.

Seventh Generation like many companies I know is at the threshold of contributing to building a great capacity of health and wellness for generations to come. I hope that the company can muster their capacity to do this at a global scale and make that difference. This is why I have always believed in Seventh Generation as a potential investment and a company deserving of my attention as a sustainability leader and consumer.

Will Seventh Generation, grow, become public or stay private, sustain the same culture, use a $30M investment? I have lots of questions to watch for answers. At the same time, based on my Lavinia Homegrown Manifesto, what can I predict? I can't predict anything at this time.

My approach to learning is to simply join a conversation if the door is open for that or to simply observe. From a distance, my instincts tell me not to predict or place bets and to identify the people who roll up their sleeves like I do to do the hard work of change and to see how they work as a community to build the company future.

Key to this approach is a recognition that Seventh Generation is a living social network of economy where it is up to the leaders to sustain this economy for eco-growth and safe chemical practices.

Comments on the Seventh Generation Blog announcing the departure of Jeffrey Hollender reflected teh tradition of protest from consumers that lacked the depth of educated analysis on a very complex topic.One consumer offered a link to the NAD post and positioned Seventh Generation as a green washer who used false advertising tactics. Mixed in with the post were protest-driven remarks about Seventh Generation adding Walmart to its distribution channels.

Last week, I featured a post that spoke of the end of an era of doing business led by a CSR hero and offered a more balanced overview for any reader from any sector in terms of the evolution of Seventh Generation (and for that matter any CSR company with a heroic founder).

CSR advocacy and protesting is often based on the mixing of "apples and oranges" that should have been give more careful analysis. Recent press suggested that Hollender has been fired and is taking the fall for Seventh Generation distribution through Walmart and other mainstream channels. Others insisted Hollender took the fall for describing Seventh Generation products as "natural" when chemicals are in use.

I offered this viewpoint on the Seventh Generation Blog with this comment:

There is a reality not spoken here that has to do with price points and innovation. It is similar to some of the challenges in the biopharm market today.

Pricepoints for new products is often higher. The LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) for years had a price point higher than usual retail or discount chains. The market research of the 90's showed that people would go into Whole Foods and spend more on Muir Organic tomatoes before they would go to Walmart. Walmart sold the same product.

It was presumed that the market of LOHAS folks would not go to WalMart.

The economy has changed and consumer profiles have changed. What people spend on anything now has changed. If the expenditure is for a product that is new and not as easy to purchase, they will pay a high price point. Look at what happened to Apple: Apple is now accessible to everyone.

The other issue is health. The new generation of parents are wise, organic and green and select this way of life no matter their politics. They live within their means and not on credit.

Hence the Seventh Generation customer has changed, the market has changed and step by step, practices and markets are emerging that base their purchases more on education of ingredients and less on who the person is behind the brand.

I received an email about my post from Germany pointing out that I did an analysis that was not about CSR martyrdom.

CSR is a buzz in journalism. In life it is a quiet practice that is not about personality. It is about finding a "new normal."

To stay viable and sustainable, Seventh Generation will have to find a "new normal."

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I also have this view regarding chemicals and #safechem practices that is not easily understood by manufacturers, consumers and government. Safe chemical practices implies finding substitutes for chemicals in use. The cost for innovation and research for finding substitutes is often beyond what one company can fund on their own.

In June 2010, I attended the American Sustainable Business Council Meeting on safe chemical practices in Washington DC. Hollender was a panelist where he spoke clearly about his commitment to transparency and the challenges and needs to build a safe chemical practice.

Through his leadership, Jeffrey Hollender has invested in educating people to the needs for a Safer Chemicals practice. I have dedicated four years of time to research on this topic as well that include my investigations of the impact of REACH and Green Chemistry. While Jeffrey and I do not agree on method and approach, at least we are both doing something about the issue.

I am always open to meeting with Jeffrey and Procter and Gamble at the same table to work out our disagreements with other experts presesnt to forge ahead on a new innovative practice with others to work out an approach to safer chemicals that can accelerate change, research and innovation. I

I know that this new method of practice for chemicals is not going to be sparked by new regulations. I also know I cannot depend on businesses alone innovating these practices in a vacuum.

Seventh Generation and Procter and Gamble responded to the claims of greenwash and false advertising that reflects their practice of transparency while they both continue to be change agents who impact the world to build a sustainable economy. Procter and Gamble, like other companies similar in size such as General Electric and Walmart, are altering the way they work, globally influencing changes with their supply chains, global consumer communities and internal practices.

With the departure of Hollender, Seventh Generation as a company faces a door of change where the its future is not clear. Once a new permanent CEO is selected, it may neither achieve nor accelerate a sustainable agenda and grow into a global giant. The world of Safer Chemicals also requires a response different than what has already been authored by GE, Walmart and P&G. I know this with certainty.

In my investigation on how to impact and lead change for Safer Chemicals, I have been digging more deeply into the history of oil spills before BP and thinking through the challenges of supply chains in working with manufacturers to assure Safe Chemicals and replace harmful chemicals. I am learning as much as I can in between all I do. Riki Ott's NOT ONE DROP is becoming my primary resource.

I have been a supporter of chemical-related REACH legislation in the European Union since its inception and have recently come to realize the bureacracy and cost of REACH in addition to how the US-proposed TSCA Reform is not addressing the real issue. The amount of chemical used is not addressing the actual dose of chemical it takes to cause harm.

Recently, I received a copy of Green Chemistry is Good For Business, a letter posted on Forbes.com by Craig S. Criddle, Robert G. Bergman and their colleagues at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Their post validates the concerns I am synthesizing through my own research on Safer Chemical and Non Ionizing Radiation Practices.

Written as a response to California's Bad Chemistry, Dr. Henry I. Miller's post on Forbes.com, the authors state that the California Green Chemistry Initiative is a "proactive regulatory effort" to create a process to "identify chemicals of the greatest concern [and] provide an analysis of safer alternatives."

By contrast, the Forbes blog post from Dr. Miller is written from a narrow view similar to the original post from Aneel Kunarni that sparked the #csrdebate in September. I feel that this post invites a similar debate with representatives who are working in the arena to eliminate harm to human health and environment through chemical toxicity.

Our public health research is always ahead of public opinion and government capability. My belief is that there are many good people working in manufacturing that stay abreast of the current public health research and opinion and the cost of media, promotion and education is exceeding the investment that many good people want to invest in programs of Safer Chemicals.

The Swedish-based non-profit ChemSec.org has become a premier example of a non-monetary incubator that can influence manufacturing and supply chains directly. Funding sources for this kind of venture are sourced through a lot of hard work and energy.

The expense of media, protest, debate, lobbying, drafting and campaign for legislation is costly and the time lines to organize laws out of fear continue to be the dominant drivers for change reported on by the press.

I believe we need to develop new formats of innovation and communities of practice that lead this change. It is not going to come from the tradition of how science, advocacy and business has worked in the past. It is going to invite new forums of communities of practice, like the forum my partners and I are launching for WE Care Global Health.

I have a professional background as a health care program manager, leader and capacity building of change. I have a personal passion for working on a safe chemical practice and defining a new capacity to insure every person's right to the best health possible in a world where one out of two people are likely to encounter chronic illness.

I am one person of millions of men, women and children who lives with a chronic illness due to unsafe use of chemicals. As a former health care program leader and manager, I understand more than most that safe chemical practices may in fact be the one of the best vehicles for reducing health care costs in the United States and any country if a perspective of "do no harm" is integrated into how we live, consume and care for health.

An advocacy approach to attack Seventh Generation or Procter and Gamble will not build the capacity we need in a sustainable economy to build safe chemical practices to "do no harm." We need new methods of building capacity, funding research and resources to manage the use of chemicals and identify chemicals that are hazardous no matter their volume of use. The amount of chemical in use is never the issue; it is the impact of chemicals of any amount that can be hazardous.

Jeffrey Hollender and I do agree on the importance of convening people of different views to a table to work on this issue. I believe this table has to invite representatives from industry, government and the non-profit sector to pull together to do the hard work, rather than simply present what each person is doing to contribute from the perspective of the sector in which they work.

I view there is a need to stop investing in educating politicians and congressional working groups to the need and how to author legislation and invite them to invest resources into community of practices who will seek out the right education on chemicals to find replacement for toxic chemicals or determine "precautionary toxic chemical use."

It is my goal to continue to contribute to build a new forum of "sustainable excellence," that impacts the health of women, children and men battling chronic illness as a result of exposure to chemical, environmental and non ionizing radiation.

While I happen to be a citizen who lives with the impact of this harm on my own health, I am also a former health care program manager, business woman and capacity builder. I have learned to live as best I can with my health challenges while developing the skill and capacity to define the necessary agenda to build "sustainable excellence" for the health and well-being of all global citizens. While this work is challenging on many fronts, it is the only way I know how to make a difference in a confusing world where chaos and protest often obstruct healthy progress.

If Seventh Generation, any company, consumer or politician wants to support this form of capacity building, I welcome any support in which to build this kind of forum of "sustainable excellence."

November 08, 2010

It was a challenge this weekend to try to make sense of what Jeffrey Hollender's departure from Seventh Generation represents. It inspired in me some thinking that was completely unexpected and actually resulted in my completing a draft chapter for my book, Tales of Meaningful Use.

Background for this Post

By the end of the weekend, Bernie Kelly, my partner in Melbourne AU, read the draft and we took some time on Skype to look at the implications of what I wrote in this book chapter to the current stage of our progress to convene the WeCareHealth Community in Australia. As a result of my conversation with Bernie, we decided that the draft chapter as written now is something we wanted to have reviewed by the people who are forming into our global alliance advisory group and our launching partners for our project in Australia.

I shared this draft chapter with numerous people I turn to for advice before the end of the weekend. It became clear that this draft chapter was a valuable piece of work that could leverage a dialogue of relevance for Seventh Generation that I want to give much greater thought to. Bernie Kelly and I have decided to do just that and mapped out a process for the chapter review that we will be acting on beginning next week to incubate our next stage of work and action research with people we trust.

This important question helped me see how the draft book chapter I wrote shed light on Jeffrey Hollender's departure.

1. Can Anyone Replace Jeffrey Hollender?

After I completed my "business analysis" of the implications of the Board's resolve to let go of Jeffrey Hollender, I thought back to two years ago when a very important person in my life, Rabbi Alan Lew, went for a jog at a rabbinical retreat where he was teaching in Baltimore and fell to the ground dead. His heart had finally given out. Alan was a very important person in my life, like Jeffrey Hollender is to many people I know in CSR. I happened to be in San Francisco the day Alan died, where I had lived for 10 years. So I joined his congregation and very sizeable personal network of people for a week to celebrate Alan's life.

A few years before Alan passed away, he had decided, like Jeffrey, to start a transition in his congregation and prepare them for a new congregational leader. Alan's talent and capacity as a human being related to spirituality, social justice and hospice had woven into his life a demand on his time from an international audience that was hard to tend to while tending to the needs of his local congregation in San Francisco where he lived.

The first rabbi hired to replace Alan failed and was fired. A search for a second rabbi took considerable time and I had occasion to talk to to two of the candidates that did not end up with an offer. In the Jewish Community it has been a repeated pattern that when a "beloved rabbi" transitions into retirement or moves on to a respected global role, the rabbi that is hired to replace the "beloved" rabbi lasts less than a year.

I actually know a "beloved rabbi" that was hired away from a congregation in the Southeast US and brought to replace another "beloved rabbi" in Southern California. So after serving one congregation flawlessly for 25 years, this rabbi was rejected by a new congregation in one year.

As I thought of this and Jeffrey Hollender, I was left with the question, can anyone really replace Jeffrey Hollender at Seventh Generation?

2. Was Peter Graham behaving like John Sculley at Apple in 1985?

By Tuesday afternoon, I was completely confused by @janmorgan's remark on Twitter: "Jeffrey Hollender gets the boot." The previous week, Seventh Generation had released its annual CSR report. In that report was a letter from Jeffrey and the CEO that had been selected to replace Jeffrey who had also recently left his post at Seventh Generation. What the heck was Jan Morgan talking about?

As the news of Jeffrey's departure leaked into digital ink on the Web, I found a blog post from @marcgunther on the “sad and shocking news”. This was the first report I could find about the incident that was grounded in some fact and contained a message from the Chairman of the Board, Peter Graham, who described Jeffrey's departure and the current goals of the company. Peter Graham is a friend of Hollender's dating back to childhood. Hollender's wife is also a significant shareholder and board member. One could only imagine the kind of tension this implies.

As I read the detail offered by Marc, this situation reminded me of the episode of change at Apple when John Sculley, Apple's CEO recruited from Pepsi, fired the founder, Steve Jobs. Recently, Sculley apologized to Jobs. It is now 20 years past this episode. It made me wonder: As years pass, what will shape from this episode in the story of Seventh Generation?

I have been a follower of the Apple story back to its founding. I became an even more serious follower when Jeffrey Pfeffer, faculty at Stanford Business School, summarized his analysis of the cost to Apple of hiring Sculley as CEO and Sculley then firing Steve Jobs. Pfeffer’s book, The Human Equation, provided a remarkable analysis of the cost and impact of this change within cycles of ups and downs at Apple.

There had been rumors of a growing tension between Chuck Maniscalco and Jeffrey. Like Sculley, Maniscalco has a Pepsico background as a President of a $10 billion division of Pepsico. This made me wonder if Maniscalco was acting as Sculley did, driving a company with a story and history of leadership and product excellence into the ring of operation dominated by brand and advertising operations?

I did a bit of a check-in and thought about other CEOs pushed out of service, e.g. HP's Marc Hurd, Carly Fiorina and Disney's Michael Eisner, and the rocky times those transitions created for these companies. Then I thought about a CEO who was not managed by his board and stakeholders, who led a very healthy company into decline and near death, Ken Olsen. Ken was founder and CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation.

3. What do these CEO departures have in common?

By week's end, Elaine Cohen’s post in support of Jeffrey offered an emotionally mature view from the position that as an outsider looking in, we may never know the real story. Her post also offered a very human side from the heart that spoke about the Jeffrey's contribution to the world of CSR. Elaine, with a posture of dignified emotional intelligence, expressed her concerns for the implications of this abrupt departure. She summarized her view and what this meant to CSR and Seventh Generation, its future, its performance and its moral, ethical and stand on transparency.

After reading Elaine's post, I ran into a couple I am friendly with at Whole Foods Market on Saturday morning. The two were taking a morning to relax with no plans. They were both exhausted. The previous day, my woman friend had lived through a pink slip session at Genzyme of 100 layoffs. Her life-partner told me they were were both vegging and he was going to cook and pamper her the entire weekend.

My woman friend currently works in a company that is going through the stress of change. If you read reports about Genzyme in the paper, the problems with the bad performance of the CEO, Henri Temeer, and the harm to Genzyme's reputation and performance have been spiralling since 2009. The Board went through a period of tension without being aligned, and now in light of the Sanofi bid to purchase Genzyme the board is aligned on one thing and one thing alone: The estimated share value of $89.00 they want from the sale of the company.

By the time I got home, I thought: Seventh Generation is not for sale like Genzyme, it is not being acquired, it is positioned for growth, its products continue to be relevant more than before. But the Founding CEO, the Board members and a short-term CEO, now candidate for the next generation of leadership, are all at odds and brought Seventh Generation into a transition grounded in a form of conflict—and that can result in harm.

4. What about the people?

Whatever I think of Jeffrey Hollender, Peter Graham or anyone in their networks of outreach, at this time, I am left with the same question Elaine and Aman asked at the end of the BSR conference: What about the people?

As a person more mature in years and age with a history of experience in the generation of CSR and Sustainability as a global practice, I have lots of opinions, stories and more. Some of them are now in my new book chapter.

In writing my book chapter, I concluded, as I often do with any project I work on: How has the leader I am writing about altered the lives of the people this person worked with, and what does his absence imply to these people?

My first answer is this. My hope and prayer for Seventh Generation is that the many competent people who served with Jeffrey to build Seventh Generation as a company of "sustainable excellence" do not have to suffer from a rocky transition that harms their capacity and ability to continue to work wisely to sustain personally, for their families and communities of residence.

In my own career experience that drew me to help contribute to the formation of sustainability and CSR as a practice, I simply have seen too much harm to the hard-working people. I hope 10 years from now, I won't be writing a case study similar to what Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote about Apple in his book The Human Equation.

Just as I am a follower of the Story of Seventh Generation, I have been a follower of the Apple story back to its founding. I became an even more serious follower when Jeffrey Pfeffer, faculty at Stanford Business School, summarized his analysis of the cost to Apple of hiring Sculley as CEO and Sculley then firing Steve Jobs. Pfeffer’s book, The Human Equation provided a remarkable analysis of the cost and impact of this change within cycles of ups and downs at Apple.

In my experience it is simply difficult for the "good people," who represent all the stakeholder groups that surround a company, to maintain and leverage from the good work they do in an environment of conflict where there has been an abrupt leadership change as a result of conflict within the board or with potential investors carving out a new stage of business for a company.

5. Serving and sustaining the future.

While I don't always agree with Jeffrey and his approaches within his closest network of colleagues, Jeffrey and I are aligned on the one thing that brought me to CSR in 1993 and led me to form WorkEcology Thought Leadership.

Like Jeffrey, I became committed to creating organization, business and economic forums that would serve seven generations forward. I wanted this personally to move beyond the harm my daughter and I experienced with millions of others from the abrupt changes imposed on us in Massachusetts during Digital Equipments's late 80's decline, followed by a very harmful recession cycle in Silicon Valley in the early 1990's. This harm imposed on millions in both California and Massachusetts became the dress rehearsal for the global chaos of 2008 and the worst two economic years in the United States, worse than the Great Depression.

The reign of a founder is often challenged when it is time to steer a course that is new and different. Only the passage of time will help the CSR world understand what the change in leadership at Seventh Generation implies, and if Peter Graham will be apologizing to Jeffrey Hollender 20 years from now.

Perhaps both men will find a new form of friendship, or both come to recognize they are both setting out to engage a new form of learning that is not based on Seventh Generation's success of the past. Any company, no matter how innovative, has to face change. This rings true for Seventh Generation and all the people associated with the company. A strategic framework will have to be shaped for all people working with Seventh Generation to allow them to work wisely, live well and sustain.